When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?

The only thing that restrains you is fear, Anton Gorodetsky. For yourself, or for people - that's not important. But we are restrained by horror. And that is why we observe the Treaty.

The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.

But even if we were to disappear, people would still be divided into people and Others. No matter how those Others were different.People can't get by without Others. Put two people on an uninhabited island, and you'll have a human being and an Other. And the difference is that an Other is always tormented by his differentness. It's easier for people. They know they're people, and that's what they ought to be. And they all have no choice but to be that way. All of them, forever.

What if it turns out there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media? Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench, scaring the grandkids in the evening.

That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.

A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.